by Jacob Cooper
“Watch this,” Ryall said. “Look how dirty this piece of the ground is. Now, I’m going to clean my feet with the mop and then mop the ground.” As he did so, Holden watched, but not because he actually cared what Ryall was doing. He started to look for yet another opportunity to best his friend, although he was currently ahead in the prank count.
After Ryall finished mopping his feet and the ground, he said, “I pronounce this part of the floor clean.” Then he stepped on it with his clean bare feet, took a few steps, and held up the soles of his feet for Holden to see. They were filthy. “A lot of good that did.”
No opportunity presented itself to Holden. He had to resort to a mere verbal assault. “Well, ya know, you can’t help it. Filthiness is just attracted to you!”
“Ha!” Ryall shouted. “We’ll see about that.” He plunged his mop into his bucket and flung the soaking head at Holden, sending a shower of grimy water toward him. Holden returned fire as they flung dirty water and insults about each other’s mothers back and forth. It took only moments for them to become drenched and reeking of filth.
“Ahhhhh!” Ryall bellowed as he charged Holden, holding his mop up as a sword. He swung down, but Holden blocked the blow, raising his own mop-sword. Their laughter echoed down the basement hallways, joined by the clanking of wood against wood as their sparring continued.
“I’ll smite you down as Oliver Wellyn did to Brant Kearon!” Holden promised. “You’re done for!”
“I didn’t know Oliver fought like a girl!” Ryall retorted. “Best I run home and fetch my sister Bethany to finish this for me so it will be more fair to you!”
But as Ryall moved his feet back and forth, he accidently sunk his left foot into his bucket and tripped backward. Holden tried to reach forward and grab his friend’s robe, but in the flickering light misjudged the distance and instead pushed him, adding force to his fall. Ryall slammed against a wall, knocking his head hard and losing his breath.
“Ryall!” Holden yelled as he knelt down beside him. “Ryall, are you all right? Speak!”
Ryall’s face contorted with pain. He moaned as he raised his right hand to the back of his head. “What was that?” he asked with a wincing voice.
“You fell. Ryall, I tried to grab you but… I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“I know I fell, stupid. That’s why I’m the one down here with a lump on my head. I meant, what was that behind me?”
Holden was obviously relieved by hearing his friend’s response mingled with typical insults. “The wall, genius. You might want to pick a softer place to land next time.”
“It can’t be a wall,” Ryall said as he stood up, uselessly trying to dust himself off. “It moved. I felt it.”
“Yup, you hit your head a little too hard. Time to go. Let me help you to your bed—”
“Get off!” Ryall demanded, shaking Holden’s arm off him. “I’m telling you it moved!”
“Blasted Heavens!” Holden said, holding his hands up in defense. “I’m only trying to help.”
Ryall wore a look of intent upon his face. He studied the wall where he had hit. Its construction was crude, composed of rocks and stone held together by mortar. He looked a few feet to the left and right of the area he hit, then hastily grabbed the torch from the sconce and inspected the structure more closely.
“Look!” he said excitedly. “The stones are different to the left. And here, to the right as well.”
“What?” Holden asked. “Ryall, it’s just a blasted—”
Putting his hands upon the wall, Ryall pushed. Nothing happened. He pushed again, harder. He grunted with the effort. Nothing. Dropping the torch, he stood back a pace or two and started to kick. Holden looked on as if his friend had lost his mind.
“Ryall stop! If someone hears they’ll come! What do you think the High Vicar will do to us this time?”
After a few more fruitless kicks, Ryall backed up from the wall about ten paces with his gaze still fixed on it.
“Finally,” Holden said with relief. “Come on, let’s get some food. Evening meal isn’t quite over.”
He turned to leave. Instead of following Holden up the stone steps to the main level of the monastery, Ryall charged the wall. When he was two paces from it, he flung his body through the air, turning himself sideways. The dull soft sound created from such a forceful impact seemed quite an understatement.
“Burning Heavens!” Holden cried. “Are you mad?”
Ryall had landed in a ball, much the way he hit the wall. His arms were wrapped around his ribs. After a moment he looked up, breathing heavily. He smiled faintly and answered, “No, not mad.” He raised his right arm, leaving his other cradling his ribs, and pointed to the wall. Holden followed Ryall’s finger and stared at the point of impact. Several rocks were depressed, forming a small crater in the wall.
“Ancient Heavens,” Holden mumbled. He grabbed the torch off the ground and stepped closer. Reaching up, he pushed a few of the dislodged stones and rocks. They fell through to the other side of the wall. The thud of their fall echoed. Ryall recovered enough to stand up.
“I told you it moved.”
“I believe you,” was all Holden could say.
They worked on the small opening for several minutes, freeing more stones until the opening was large enough for them to crawl through. Ryall took the torch and tossed it through to the other side. Their heads knocked together as they both moved to peer through the opening.
In the small radius of orange-yellow light, all that could be made out was that the cavern, or whatever it was, appeared to be quite spacious. The boys looked at each other with amazement mixed with mischievousness.
“Me first,” Ryall declared.
“Definitely, you first,” Holden replied.
It didn’t take much effort to squeeze through the hole they had made. Ryall took in his surroundings with mouth agape as Holden slid through the opening. He coughed from the dust and spit.
“This better be worth it,” the redheaded boy remarked, coming to Ryall’s side. “There’s no hiding this. We’ll be expelled for sure. Maybe they’ll even make this our crypt!” Ryall didn’t answer. Holden finally looked around and inspected their discovery. “Dimming Light!” he whispered.
Surrounding the young adherents was an expansive cavern of small honeycomb inlets along all sides of the walls. The room had no discernible shape but was mostly spherical, interrupted by occasional jagged directional changes jutting abruptly at odd angles. Stalactites hung from the ceiling in several places. Mineral enriched water dripped from them and formed several small puddles with stalagmites rising from them, reaching for their counterpart above. In a few places, the rock growths had reached each other and formed golden yellow columns sporadically throughout the room. There was a small pond of water in the middle of the cavern whose stillness was occasionally interrupted by a falling drop of water from a stalactite. In each honeycomb inlet lay roughly half a dozen scrolls. Thousands upon thousands stretched out before them. Some inlets contained vials of liquid and ancient looking clay jars as well as odd trinkets of strange create.
Holden reached out to the nearest inlet and retrieved a single scroll. “So brittle,” he said.
Ryall grabbed the torch and joined him. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know if we dare unroll it. It might not survive judging by how frail it feels.”
“Look.” Ryall pointed at the inlet from where Holden had taken the scroll. “It’s labeled with a glyph.” Engraved into the base of the rock inlet was indeed a symbol of some create. “I don’t know it. Is it Sentharian? Oh, here’s another on this inlet!” Ryall moved from inlet to inlet, noticing the glyph at the base of each one and then moving on enthusiastically. “I can’t make them out. Can you read them?”
“No,” Holden said with ice in his voice. “We have to get out of here.”
“What? Why? We just got here!”
“Now, Ryall! We have to leave!” His voice quavered.
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Ryall turned to face Holden. “If you’re scared about getting in trouble, I think it’s a little late for that.”
Holden turned and started heading toward the exit. Ryall grabbed his robe and stopped him. “What is it?” he demanded, flummoxed by his friend’s lack of fascination with their discovery.
“We can’t read the glyphs, Ryall, but I know what they are.”
Ryall had a bemused look on his face. “And?”
Holden turned pale as he said, “Hardacheon.”
They had placed the stones and rocks back into position as best as could be expected in their hurried frenzy. In such a remote portion of the basement, it seemed unlikely anyone would notice the breach unless a close inspection was undertaken. Someone would have to know exactly what to look for and where. They tried to convince themselves that they were safe, but a feeling of apprehension remained with them.
In the days following, Ryall meandered through the monastery in a type of trance, paying no attention to his studies or duties. Holden seemed much the same. They barely spoke, not even to each other. But they shared several knowing looks that conveyed much about how they were both feeling. Though he could tell Holden was shaken from the experience, Ryall could not stop thinking about the discovery and all that existed in the underground cavern.
“Let it be,” Holden had warned him. “Put it out of your mind.” Perhaps it was the risk that tempted Ryall to return to the cavern, or even just the thought of an adventure—although trolling around in an ancient library of sorts had never crossed his mind as adventurous before.
“What harm could there be?” Ryall had replied. “No one ever goes to those parts—”
“You don’t know that.”
“We barely made it a few feet inside before turning into cowards. There’s so much there we could explore!” Ryall pleaded with Holden to return with him during the night, but Holden was firm.
“We can’t go back!” Holden exclaimed. “Those were Hardacheon records, Hardacheon relics! Don’t you get it? Haven’t you paid attention at all? All the writings teach of the Hardacheon Influences, the evil they wrought upon this land. By the Ancient Heavens, it’s one of the main reasons the Changrual were brought here during the invasion. They had to exterminate the Dark Influences that were in this land or victory would have been lost. Every bit of the Hardacheon culture and teaching was destroyed. This is basic history!”
“Oh?” his friend replied. “Then what, pray tell, are all those Hardacheon relics and scrolls doing down there?”
“Listen, Ryall, I know you. I know this is unbelievably tempting to you. But you gotta let it be. We can’t risk being in that room. I don’t just say this because we could be caught, but we don’t know what lurks there, what Influences are there. Has it occurred to you that it was sealed off for a reason?”
“How did you know those glyphs were Hardacheon?” Ryall asked with a hint of accusation. “And don’t tell me I should pay attention more in class. I looked through all our study scrolls. There is no mention, much less examples, of Hardacheon glyphs.”
“I don’t know. It was a guess,” Holden said.
“Liar! You knew right away! I saw it on your face. You forget we had the same nursemaid growing up, Holden. I can read you just as well as you can read me.”
Holden looked away and appeared pensive. Finally he said, “I just knew, okay? I can’t explain it to you.” Looking back up at his friend he continued sternly, “And before you get carried away with your crazy ideas, it’s not because I’m a Hardacheon in disguise or have some secret ability to read ancient languages. It was just a feeling.” Holden looked down and said more softly, “It was actually a rather cold feeling. The same feeling I would get when your dad would tell us those scary legends of Hardacheons from long ago when we were younger.”
Ryall did not continue to press his friend, but his mind refused to let go of the possibilities. He could not find much sleep in the nights that followed as his mind toiled with the temptation to revisit the cavern. Finally, he made his decision.
Two days and a half span after discovering the cavern, Ryall snuck out of his chamber past midnight, careful not to wake Holden. He had retired that night in his robe so that he would not have to dress when the time came. One advantage of their five-day-long punishment to clean the monastery was that Ryall knew the place better than even some of the Vicars, he suspected. He wouldn’t need a torch to find his way. He brought one nonetheless, but would not light it until he was in the cavern. He double-checked that his flint and striker were in his pocket.
Ryall made his way slowly down the steps, concentrating on silence. He ran his hand along the wall once in the basement chambers until his fingers detected the change in the surface. He stopped and tested a few rocks. They were loose.
Ever so carefully, he removed the stones and rocks they had broken free from the mortar on his previous visit. He dared not stack them in the dark for fear of accidentally knocking them over and drawing attention, even at this late hour.
Once through the opening, he took the concealed torch from his robe and lit it with his flint and striker. He squinted against the flame’s light until his sight adjusted fully. The magnitude of the cavern once again struck him. The number of honeycomb inlets was dizzying to behold. Ryall had no idea where to even begin, which meant it didn’t matter where he started.
Taking his torch, he inspected dozens of the inlets, mostly studying the glyphs. They were indecipherable to him but this did not stop him from continuing to stare at them, memorizing them as best he could. He cursed himself for not bringing ink and parchment to copy down the ancient symbols. He hoped his brain would cooperate and later recall the few he committed to memory.
He penetrated deeper into the giant space. The sound of dripping water from the prevalent stalactites produced a random cadence that accompanied his wandering. He sampled a few scrolls here and there, opening only the ones that felt durable enough. Materials of all create were used, from parchment to animal hide to copper. He even discovered a vertical stack of large obsidian tablets leaning against a far wall. They would have blended in seamlessly to the blackness, their color a natural camouflage in this grotto, save for the shimmering reflection the torchlight produced against their polished surface.
These appear to be Archiver tablets, Ryall thought. Why are they stored here? Technically the Jarwyn Mountains were part of the Eastern Province where he came from, although the Archivers who lived high near their peaks enjoyed a level of autonomy, having predated the Senthary.
He looked closer and became excited. The writing is Sentharian! At the top of each tablet was a symbol. Though he couldn’t decipher them, he knew the style well enough by now to know for sure that they were Hardacheon. Despite the foreign glyphs at the top of each tablet, the body of the text on the great obsidian slabs was most definitely Sentharian. A curious thought occurred to Ryall as he walked past dozens of rows of the slabs, all lined up edge to edge in this far part of the underground chamber. Perhaps it’s a filing system of sorts. He looked more closely at the glyphs on each tablet, feeling the chiseled grooves with his fingers. Finally, he came to one he recognized, one of the few he had memorized. Under the glyph at the top he saw written in Sentharian:
The Chronicled Era of Tyre Wellyn
18-27 Years After Unification
He counted seven tablets from front to back in this row, all leaning up against one another. It was no small effort to retrace some of his steps and find the inlet with the matching glyph. He counted the number of scrolls that lay in the inlet. Seven.
He returned to the row of obsidian tablets and pondered for a few moments. He stepped to the right, to the next row of tablets.
The Chronicled Era of Oliver Wellyn, the Second of his Name
27-61 Years After Unification
Fingering the glyph on the top of the first tablet in this row, he brought the torch close enough to distinctly make out the symbol. It looked like two oblong c
ircles, one above the other and slightly to the left. They overlapped diagonally and a horizontal line pierced the intersection of the circles. After memorizing it, he counted the number of tablets in this row. Only four. He searched the inlets around where he’d matched the prior glyph, quickly finding it. In the alcove with the matching glyph lay four rolled scrolls. A chill ran up and down Ryall’s spine.
He returned again to the row of tablets that claimed to be the record of Oliver the Second and stepped left two rows.
The Chronicled Era of Oliver Wellyn, the First of his Name
The Invasion of the Senthary and Defeat of the Hardacheon People
The Fall of House Kearon and Rise of the Realm
6 Years Before Unification—18 Years After Unification
For hours, Ryall read. He continued well past first moon, into the early hours of the new day. He carefully hefted tablet after tablet to the side when he had completed reading one and went excitedly to the next. Finally, the torch diminished beyond useful light. Ryall cursed himself for not bringing a second torch, but realized it was probably best as the sun would surely be rising soon.
I must bring back a stack of parchment to take rubbings, he thought excitedly. So immersed was he in his discovery that he never saw the dark figure approach him from behind. A hand cloaked in shadow reached out for Ryall.
TWENTY-NINE
Reign
Day 27 of 1st Dimming 412 A.U.
REIGN DID REMEMBER HER FATHER. Perfectly, in fact. She had found no nepenthe that could put a shroud upon her memory of him, though not for lack of trying. She remembered as a youngling how he had taught her to listen in the forest, to truly listen. To feel. She could recall with clarity the first time her ears were opened and the shock of sensing so many things at once, so much life. It was overwhelming, but fascinating and addicting in the way a child is attracted to playing with fire. Thannuel had rocked back with laughter at seeing the innocent surprise upon Reign’s face as she pulled her hand back rapidly from the Triarch tree. She couldn’t have been more than half the age innocence.